織紙 - Letters from Olivia

Don't call it a comeback....

But I'm still here.

Slipped into the zone of derelict bloggers...shortly after my last post I somewhat unexpectedly transitioned into the life of a full-time working mom. Blogging during Kaion's naps went the way of the dodo. It's been an intense few months. But we are finding our cruise control now. Things are running along pretty smoothly in the Origami house and we are all happy with this new way of life. We have an amazing nanny in our lives now, who helps us keep all the balls in the air. She also happens to be Japanese, which is a godsend for my attempts to make Kaion a bilingual babe. When I come home at the end of my workday and am greeted by my boy's rousing rendition of "Kira, kira hikaru" (Twinkle, twinkle little star), I feel justified in paying her half my salary. 

I'd been making a few false starts in my attempt to get back to the blog, but here is what made me sit down to write again. I finally got around to calling my best friend in Japan (you remember Kaya, and our girls' trip to Shizuoka circa blog post 2009). We had a great chat but it had seriously been more than 6 months since we'd had any contact. Faaaaar too long. And she admitted she had been worried about me because she followed my blog and had been waiting for an update. And I realized, even though I don't get a lot of comments on my blog, which sometimes makes me feel a bit why-bother, I do know my friends and family read it. And enjoy the updates. In fact, when I finally logged in and checked my stats, I'm still averaging 8.7 page views per day (Who are you hardcore fans, by the way?) So I need to keep it going. To keep the connections strong.

I realize it has been ages since anyone has seen Kaion, so this might surprise you, how big he is now. It surprises me every day. He's a walkin', talkin', dancin' bundle of energy and joy. This is a video of him dancing with his Auntie on his 2nd birthday. Break it down, folks.

 

 

Joe-d out

Is there such a thing as too much Joe? I didn't think so, but yesterday Kaion proved it was possible:

 

I took my in-laws to the Real Canadian Superstore for a sample of Canuck culture. Well, they not only lapped it up, but practically gulped it down. After two hours of shopping, Kaion threw in the towel but the Ladies of Nippon kept going strong for another hour while I took baby K back to the car and sat and ate a granola bar while waiting for them to finish. I never saw the grand total, but they showed up lugging bags of baby clothes, pajamas, make-up, CDs, and of course, maple syrup and maple cookies. I understood though. Kinda like me coming home from Japan, actually, minus the maple-ness.

What do you like to bring back from your travels?

Let's learn Japanese!

Well, it's been a busy week full of:

Airplanes - 飛行機 (hikoki)

 

Airports - 空港 (kuko)

Haircuts - 散髪 (sanpatsu)

Shrines - 神社 (jinja) and Gardens - 植物園 (shokubutsuen)      

And family, family family! - 家族 (kazoku)

 

It was a great time. A crazy, busy time. We just got home last night. And are jet-lagged....boy, are we jet-lagged (let's just say me cruising around Victoria at 1:30 in the morning with Kaion in the backseat in a vain attempt to get him to sleep is not normal behaviour - btw, it didn't work, he seemed more excited than sleepy). And that theory that it's an overnight flight so kidlet will sleep on the plane, right? Yah - out the window. I have had about 7 broken hours of sleep in the last 48. And my mother-in-law and sister-in-law and niece all just arrived a few hours ago. So give me a few days. Keep your fingers crossed I survive. And then I'll be back with some more Japan stories and pictures from the wedding!

xoxo The Origami crew

Nakayoshi

Today Kaion and I met with our good friends N-san and R-kun. We met them for the first time a few months ago at a park soon after we arrived in Victoria and it felt a little-bit like a star-crossed moment. The boys played together well and N-san and I chatted easily, like we had known each other for a long time. As Kaion and I were getting ready to go home, I scribbled my name and number on the back of a grocery receipt and nervously handed it to N-san, really, really hoping that she would call me. Well, she did - the very next day - and we arranged another playdate soon after. The rest, as they say, is history!

R-kun is almost a year older than Kaion, but the two of them get on really well and seem to enjoy each other's company. The best word I can think of to describe them is the Japanese term, nakayoshi, which means "to get along well", or "good friends", depending on how you use it. And I would describe N-san and I pretty much the same way, too. Today we met at Willows Beach, which is a great place for exploring, running up and down in the sand, picking up stones and driftwood and throwing rocks into the water (I give full credit to  R-kun for teaching Kaion how to do this). It also has a nice playground and today the boys discovered a fun new thing to do. Not sure what this thing is officially called...a dizzy tulip or something:

Afterwards we went to Crumbsy's, a fabulous mom and baby cafe, with a kids' play area and yummy sandwiches and coffee and best of all...cupcakes!

The boys played hard and had a great time. Kaion was asleep, literally, within a minute of us driving home. Can't wait for next time!

A looooooooong weekend

To celebrate the May long weekend, we decided to go on our first camping trip of the year. K-chan was hankering for some surf (the waters of nearby spots Jordan River and Sombrio having become flat for the summer), so along with K's surfing buddy T-san (yes, the previous postings' crab fisherman) and his wife, we packed up the car and headed south to LaPush, Washington. I didn't know anything about LaPush until the day before our trip I was chatting with my friend S on the phone and mentioned where we were headed and she said, "LaPush? You're going to LaPush? Do you know what LaPush is?!". I innocently answered that I didn't, and learned that La Push is the setting for the uber-popular Twilight series and was warned by my friend that it could be busy with vampires and werewolves or at least a bunch of people looking for them. Lovely.

Well, long story short, the trip got off to a slow start by a packed ferry, where we missed the first sailing by a hair's breadth, the car in front of us getting the last spot on in the standby lineup (um, no, we didn't have a reservation for a long weekend. duh.) So at least we were the first car for the next sailing 5 hours later, so we parked 'er and walked around downtown for the afternoon. Not a bad way to spend a day, and we discovered the gourmet fish & chips shack, Red Fish Blue Fish at the Fisherman's Wharf. Amazing, is all I can say. BBQ salmon tacones. Um, yes. Watch out any visitors to my place; I will definitely be taking you there! Here we are, finally, on the 3:15pm sailing (after arriving at the ferry terminal at 8:30am) :

Anyway, we finally got across the border and over to our campsite around 7:30pm, at which time it promptly began to rain as we set up camp. Too tired to make anything, we boiled water and dined on instant noodles, ballpark peanuts and Coronas while Kaion slept in the car. Kaion then woke up at 9pm (I thought he was out for the night, but I guess he thought it was just a nap), so I bundled him up and fed him some noodles and bread while he sat in his camp chair and he thought that was pretty cool:

The rest of the weekend was pretty good, although according to the guys the surf wasn't as great as they had hoped, so they were a bit bummed. But we had had a nice time with our friends, got to know our Twilight trivia a little better and while it could have been a bit warmer, we still had a great time playing on the beach for hours:

 




It was a weekend of surf, sun (a little bit, anyway) and more than a couple of sandy diapers!      

Why am I so tired?

This photo pretty much sums up my current relationship with my kid. You think this photo was taken at the end of a long day of going to the park, crafts, snacks, etc...? Ha, ha...I wish. More like it's noon and I am spent. After being woken up at 6 by what was supposedly a kiss-turned-head-butt, I have achieved the following: making oatmeal, feeding kid oatmeal, picking oatmeal out of kid's hair, high chair cushion, off the table, floor, myself...how much oatmeal actually made it into the kid? No clue. I, however, have downed a full bowl, having mastered the art of inhaling food at light speed because 0.437 seconds is about how much time I have to eat before running interference again. Cleaning up after breakfast involves shoving dishes haphazardly into dishwasher while performing one of more of the following: being ignored when asking child to get down from the window ledge and physically removing him from danger at least 5 times, stacking the kitchen chairs in a corner to prevent him from climbing onto the table, peeling child off the built-in shelving which he can now use to climb onto the kitchen counter, applying velcro tape to the fridge door handles to prevent endless opening and closing of refrigerator and/or cleaning up an entire pitcher of ice tea/bottle of soy sauce/ container of yogurt (you choose) dumped on the floor when I inadvertedly left the fridge un-taped and unattended for 20 seconds. Next, let's get dressed. Chasing naked child through apartment while he runs, waving a diaper in the air, yelling "no, no, no", hog-wrestling him into said diaper. Applying t-shirt and jeans to what feels like trying to clothe a wriggling, 25 lb. live salmon while you're pulling it in on the line. A minute to catch my breath, as putting socks on is apparently the eighth wonder of the world and child actually sits still for 60-ish seconds. Now I try to get myself dressed...same jeans as yesterday and oh, a black t-shirt since anymore time spent diverting my attention to myself and I will be hearing the flush of my toothbrush going down the toilet (mental note #10878, investigate toilet seat locks at next trip to London Drugs). Place kid in bathtub (empty) and thank god for deep soaker tubs and the fact that he's not yet tall enough to climb out (I figure I've got about another 5 days before he finds a way to escape). Splash face with water, moisturize, brush teeth for 10 seconds, brush hair and hand over hairbrush to child as he screams for me to give it to him. Suddenly find time standing still and wonder if my heart might actually burst with love while watching my kid try to brush his own hair like Mommy as he looks up and gives me the sweetest smile in the world.

I'll stop there as just writing this is exhausting me. But if anyone out there has the answer to my query, comments are open...where, where, where does a 1 and a half year old get all their energy from? And how do you survive, or at least pace yourself, in the days between now and the first day of school?

 

Feeling crabby

The picture below should give you a good indication of the mood present in the Origami home yesterday evening:

 

K-chan's Japanese surfing buddy, T-san, has himself a BC shellfish fishing license. Apparently this allows him to harvest clams, mussels, shrimp, crab and all other delightful crusteceanous creatures of the sea. He gave us a call yesterday to say that he had been up to visit his traps in Sidney and would we like a couple of crabs for dinner? Ummmm....sure? While K-chan's Japanese heritage kicked in, leaving him quivering in anticipation of fresh, still crawling, seafood , I broke out into a cold sweat while Googling "how to cook live crabs", imagining the slaughter taking place in our kitchen a few hours hence.

I have to say it all went remarkably well. I discovered that the most humane thing to do is to put the lil' crabbers on ice, in the freezer for 30 mins to kind of anethetize them and then drop them into a pot of boiling salted water. The crab won't know what hit him and less wrestling into the pot for the cook (apparently when crabs get scared they adopt a wings-spread, claws-out pose which makes it harder for the chef (physically and emotionally, I suppose) to get them into the pot).

Here's Kaion getting crabby with a chilled one:

 

So, after Kaion's first lesson about where our food comes from, we sat down to enjoy the feast:

 In addition to the crab, we had some warabi, a kind of wild plant that T-san and his wife had picked while out hiking. It's quite common in Japan in the spring, and apparently grows here as a native plant, too. I blanched it and we ate some pretty much as is, just dipping it into mayo. I also made a bit of a rice-topping dish with it, chopping it up and mixing it with mayo, wasabi, bonito flakes and a touch of soy sauce. Yum. We had some accompaniments for the crab like limes for squeezing and soy sauce for dipping but the meat itself was so good that we pretty much just ate it straight out of the shell.

Kenichi commented that it was nice to have such a leisurely meal - we were at the table nearly an hour, and actually drank a full glass of wine and got some adult convo in. A rarity with a short-attention spanned toddler who usually starts flinging food at the 15-minute mark. Although Kaion couldn't eat the crab (shellfish is a no-no for babies until at least around 2 y.o.) I think he was a bit mesmerized watching us cracking the shells and pulling the meat out and kept himself busy with some of the leftovers:

I guess this is one instance where I can say that this crabby baby is actually quite sweet.

Pure pleasures

Well, I've been gone for a little while. Not anywhere special. But just kind of lying low. Looking for work has that tendency to just kind of suck everything from you. And K-chan is looking now, too. So, we're a bit mentally worn out in the Origami household. It's a lot tougher out there than we anticipated. But, it's kind of a competition now. We'll just wait and see who gets hired first!

However, in times like these it's important to focus on all the wonderful, simple things that still make up part of everyday life. So, I present to you a photo celebration of our recent daily pleasures:

 Long, leisurely mornings at the park. The deal Kaion and I have going is that we stop on the way there for Mommy to get a coffee, split a muffin for snack and then Kaion gets at least an hour to run around to his heart's content. This also makes for a long afternoon nap for a tired boy - and pure pleasure for mom!

The most adorable tray of cupcakes from Crave, lovingly and carefully carried from Calgary to Victoria by my cousin on her recent visit here - thanks, Em! Here is a pic of us on a walk through Chinatown:

 

Making my first bento in a looooong time, for Kaion and me to share at a playdate picnic. Onigiri (rice balls) and salmon and tofu croquettes:

 

Wearing cute clothes sent with love from Montreal by my lovely friend C:

 

And finally this morning, opening a jar of the strawberry jam I made in Japan a couple of months ago. Spread on top of hot-from-the-oven lemon and sour cream muffins, it was a little taste of heaven.

  

Anyway, keep on keeping you fingers crossed for us please! xoxo

 

On the flip side

So, as I mentioned in a previous post, I am on the hunt. Job-hunting, that is. Looking for that perfect position that will pay the bills, encourage personal growth, give one a sense of accomplishment and oh yeah some benefits, to go, please. It's strange to think that in my former LBK (life before Kaion) I was actually getting paid to teach people how to job hunt and write a resume and network and make themselves marketable and all that jazz. And now I find myself on the flip side, having to actually walk the walk, and man is it tough. Two weeks in and I'm already feeling like I want to just curl up on the couch with a jar of Nutella and a spoon and pretend the outside world doesn't exist!

But alas, life goes on and aside from emailing resumes and cold-calling prospective employers, I'm still loving the day-to-day. We had a fantastic visit from Ronpa this weekend and a little road trip up to Nanaimo to get a feel for the place we'll likely be spending more time in once my sister arrives to start her residency there this summer. And of course, a visit to the city-it-was-named-for, would not be complete without a bite of the famous Nanaimo Bar:

Okay, okay, before you tsk, tsk me for willfully allowing my son to put himself into a sugar-induced coma, let it be known, that the treat was split four ways. While I initially prided myself on raising a kid who turned away sweets in favour of avocado, I have noticed lately Kaion is developing a bit of a taste for chocolate (just like his mom). He'll grab chocolate chip cookies out of my hand, and the other day I made the mistake of offering him a bit of bread with Nutella on it (I imagined us snacking a la francaise, with an afternoon slice of baguette et tartine noisettes and a glass of milk, maman-et-enfant ensemble). Well, he went crazy for it and I ended up having to move the jar to a high-up shelf because he was literally raiding the cupboard where I previously kept it, and now that he has mastered twisting the lid off things.....

If only there was a shelf high enough that mommy couldn't reach. Gotta watch those job-hunting stress spoon-in-jar episodes. I still have to be able to fit into the Interview Pants, after all.

Last days

We are back home from Japan now. What an amazing trip! It took a few days to recover from 24 hours of travel and K-chan came down with some bad seasonal allergies when we got back (our first spring in Victoria, he's never experienced this before. What could it be? Alder? That's what the pharmacist thought). Then we had some beautiful friends, H & L visit us from Calgary, and poof, a whole week was gone. And the end of the Japan trip marks the beginning of a new era for the Origami fam. We've decided that for the time being Daddy K is going to stay home with Baby K. And Mama Ori is going back to work. So I'm looking for a job now. And enjoying what I figure is the last little bit of time we have as a threesome to spend quiet weekdays walking and going to the park and enjoying our favourite cafe/bakery when it is uncrowded (it's a total zoo on weekends).

As for Japan, our next trip is already in the works, as it was recently announced that K-chan's brother is getting married this summer and we'll be going back for the wedding. So saying goodbye wasn't so hard this time since we knew we would be back in a few months. We spent our last few days visiting with some friends and just walking through the neighbourhood. Some pics:

Kaion with his "Ji-Ji"

 

Sharing a snack with friends in the park

The ume (plum blossoms) were starting to come out just before we left 

 

Kaion got a haircut a few hours before we drove to the airport

 

And just one of the bazillion images I have of Japan stored in my mental hard drive

 

And while we are gradually getting used to being a jet-setting family (Kaion is now in the two under two club - two trans-pacific trips before his second birthday!), we are still affected by the same rigors of travel as everyone else:

Good to be back, though. Home, sweet home.